


In Through The Out Door

by agoldenblackbird (mass_hipgnosis)



Series: Runes (The Zeppelin Verse) [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:16:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mass_hipgnosis/pseuds/agoldenblackbird
Summary: Buffy's resurrection ritual inexplicably and inescapably wound her own soul with the essence of the Slayer.  When she dies stopping an apocalypse, she's sent back into her teenage body by the Powers.  And she is Not.  Pleased.





	1. Everything Old Is New Again

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Zeppelin Verse. Zeppelin verse is me having fun. It's me indulging my weirdest 'what ifs' and my fanon rants and my happily-ever-after daydreams. It's me turning tropes on their heads and borrowing clever ideas from other works (all neatly listed where applicable). Basically, if you are expecting a serious, tightly plotted fic, these are NOT the droids you're looking for.

When Whistler gets to the small white waiting room that's part of Limbo, Buffy Summers has already wrenched one of the metal legs off a chair and is swinging it back and forth as though testing how effective it would be at bashing someone's head in.

 

She whirls around the moment he appears. “Whistler.”

 

“Hey, Summers. Listen, you bought it in that last big fight.”

 

“I figured. We close the portal?”

 

“Yeah. Coven got it all squared away,” he assures her. It'd been one of the apocalypses that were practically commonplace, nowadays.

 

She narrows her eyes at him. “So what's the deal, Whistler? Are you my ride to the Good Place?”

 

He winces. “Not exactly.”

 

“Explain.” The glare she's leveling at him makes his stomach try to climb up his throat and escape.

 

“Well, you see, what happened is-”

 

“ _Five_. Words. Or. Less.” Her tone makes it clear they'll be revisiting the whole ribcage-hat thing if he's not succinct.

 

“Rosenberg screwed up your resurrection.”

 

The Slayer slumps in one of the waiting-room chairs and puts one hand over her eyes, even as the other hand and its' melee weapon beats an impatient tattoo on the magazine-scattered coffee table. “Jesus Christ, of _course_ she did. All right, give it to me straight; what's the damage?”

 

“Okay, so there are different chunks that make up Buffy Summers. You've got your soul, and your Slayer-demon, and your essence...your personality and way of looking at the world and stuff like that. Normally, they're separate, they fit together like puzzle pieces but they're distinct, and you can take one away without damaging the others. That's how vampires get made, right, soul is yanked away and the demon snaps into place next to it.”

 

Her mouth says “Go on,” but her eyes say, _I already don't like where this is going, and may yet kill the messenger._

 

“Rosenberg's spell mushed those three bits up together. In fact, the only reason her spell to activate the Potentials even _worked_ was because Faith was already a slayer. If she'd tried to pull that Slayer piece from _you_ to start the chain, it woulda been like yanking on a piece of concrete with your bare hands tryin' to make it into water, gravel and cement. Ain't gonna happen. And the Slayer part's immortal, even though your body isn't, which is why you're here instead of the Good Place.”

 

She crosses her arms. The fact that she put down her weapon to do it doesn't make him feel any safer. “So you're telling me I can't die.”

 

“Until we can figure out how to un-mix that concrete? No. And unless we're going to fuck things up so spectacularly that the First Evil has a chance to gain a foothold again, we need _time_ to work that out. So right now, the plan is to send you back to your body when you were first Called. And you need to stay alive as long as possible. Longer than this-twelve years is not gonna cut it. And no time-outs this time.”

 

“Me _dying_ wasn't a _time-out,”_ she snarls.

 

“From a cosmic perspective, it kinda was-”

 

“Whistler. Stop talking before I put _you_ in a cosmic time-out.” Her eyes are actually glowing like a vampire's, but green instead of gold.

 

“Right, okay, shutting up.” He holds up both hands, palm-out, _I come in peace._

 

She paces the small white room for a few minutes, but it doesn't seem to be helping any. If the way the air is crackling is any indication, time to think is making her more pissed off, and not less. Finally she says, “Are you going to tell me that I can't change anything that happened in the first timeline?”

 

“No. First of all, we want you to not die, and the First to not rise, which means you kinda _have_ to change some things. And second of all, there'd be no point.”

 

“Explain.”

 

“See, the thing is, Summers, timelines are delicate. From a cosmic perspective, you taking a step an inch ahead of where you did before can change just as much as you going back to the start of things and having yourself a merry killing spree. Even if you tried to stick to the previous timeline as close as you can remember, things still wouldn't be exactly how they were before.”

 

She rakes her hands through her hair and looks like she's thinking. “Can I get Called early?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, you said I can't not be the Slayer, so can you send me back earlier, and I can be the Slayer instead of the girls before me, so they get to live?”

 

That sounds like something his Bosses might go for. “How much earlier?”

 

“Let's say, three Slayers before me.”

 

Whistler considers that, gets a response. No explanation, because there isn't usually. **_NO._** “I'm getting a negatory on that.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Above my pay-grade. Must be something important that Carmen de la Cruz needs to do, that you can't.” _Two Slayers before._ Whistler pictures it, Buffy Summers getting Called at that moment.

 

_Yes._

 

“How about two Slayers early? You'd get Called on March 20th, 1994. The Vernal Equinox. And Svetlana Bogdanović and India Cohen will get to live normal lives.”

 

“There won't be, like, local apocalypses that they needed to stop?”

 

“Summers, I know you got the impression that apocalypses happen at least once a year, but it ain't usually like that. Before having more than one Slayer threw off the Balance, they were every decade at best.”

 

“So when I died and came back and there were two Slayers, that threw off the Balance, and suddenly we had apocalypse season. And then we activated all the Potentials, and all of a sudden apocalypses were springing up all over.”

 

“Pretty much.”

 

"Well, crap. The Scoobies didn't throw things off?”

 

“Uh-uh. They didn't have any special powers, and they were doing it out of their own free will. The Powers can only have so many Champions at one time. Humans helping 'cause they want to isn't prophesied or taken into account by the PTB's.”

 

“So Spike...”

 

“Once he got a soul? Threw things off more. Hel-lo First Evil,” Whistler agrees.

 

“Because Angel was already doing the Champion-Redemption deal.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But Spike before that, with no soul, was fine.”

 

“Before he got a soul, he wasn't a Champion according to their rules.”

 

“Their rules are stupid.”

 

Whistler pauses, then says, “That is the sound of no one arguing with you.”

 

“So you're going to send me back to my own body, at the moment that Svetlana Bogdanović was Called.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“All right, I'm ready, do it.”

 

Whistler closes his eyes briefly. _Thank the Powers, I survived this conversation._ “Done.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole Carmen de la Cruz / Svetlana Bogdanović thing is from my own personal headcanons, wayyyy back in the dark ages, pre-comics, when Buffy was still on the air. I'd written a fic that never saw daylight about Buffy making a wish to go back with her prescient knowledge and be Called early, and spare the two Slayers before her (that fic got kinda mashed into this one). Even now that we know about India Cohen, I've had that in my head as btvs prehistory, so I bumped them in before Cohen, and and had India last three months instead of three years to make the numbers work.

Buffy opens her eyes and sees her childhood bedroom in the house in LA. She looks at the bedside clock-11:48 p.m. Makes sense; it's the moment Carmen de la Cruz died facing off against a drug-dealing vampire gang in Bogotá. She was thirteen, and only lasted seven weeks, poor kid. 

Buffy sighs and gets out of bed, sneaks downstairs and gets a knife, a box of salt and four emergency candles out of the pantry. She uses her nail file to carve the appropriate runes into the wax, slices open the pad of her index finger to charge the runes with her blood, then climbs into the jacuzzi bathtub in her ensuite and opens the window. She melts the bottoms of the candles and sticks them to the tiled tub surround, then pours the salt in a circle around her bare feet. 

It's supposed to be _blessed_ salt, not table salt. At least the candles are white, although they're supposed to be beeswax and not paraffin, not so good. She's already had a front row seat to the Willow Rosenberg Show as ample proof that DIY rituals with sketchy last-minute substitutions tend to go kerplooey. 

But. She doesn't want Merrick to die for her again, and she doesn't want the Council poking around in her business right now, either, expecting her to be all scared and confused and newly-Called. She doesn't know exactly what they'd do if they thought she was not who she appeared to be, but it being the Council, she can probably rule out 'something good.' 

At midnight, she lights the four candles, counterclockwise starting with the one in front of her, and says, “Goddess Hecate I beseech thee, aid a daughter of Sineya, conceal me from the men-who-watch, and bar the sight of _all_ those seeking the Chosen One.” 

The candleflames turn red. The salt turns black. The candles sputter and go out. Buffy gets out of the tub, hides the candles at the back of her makeup drawer, and washes the salt down the drain. It's a simple spell, one she had to renew monthly in the future, to allow the Buffy-decoys to do their work. 

She'd been shocked to find out that she could cast magick. The Devon coven had educated her. Not everyone had Willow's intrinsic skill and raw power, but anyone who was willing to learn could do simple rituals, and Buffy, after learning how to tap into her Slayer power, is capable of more than that. It hadn't gone over well with Willow, who still had too much of her self-worth bound up in her magickal ability. 

_Okay, stop dwelling, Buffy,_ she chides herself. _That Willow no longer exists, anyway, and it's time for bed._ She sets her alarm for four-thirty and hides the clock under her pillow so it won't wake her parents. Sunrise isn't until around 7, she can do a sweep of the closest cemeteries before dawn and pass it off as a run. 

* * *

Buffy wakes at the warning _click-bzzz_ before her alarm starts blaring, and fumbles to switch it off. _Right. Pre-dawn cemetery sweep._ Still half-awake, she reaches for her phone, planning to use Google Maps to lay out a route, the way she always does in an unfamiliar city, before remembering. 

_It's 1994, I don't have a cell phone, and Google doesn't even exist yet. Crap._

So once she's dressed in the least-heinously ugly running clothes she can find, she sneaks into the garage and looks at the map of Greater Los Angeles that her mom keeps in the glove-box of her car, and plans her patrol. 

_When I was first Called, Merrick clocked me at 30 mph,_ she considers. _Before I died this last time I could do about 60 mph at a sustained sprint of an hour, faster at shorter speeds. Assuming the worst, that I'm back to where I was for speed and strength, and allowing pauses for traffic lights and slaying, I better do a small loop._

She works out a route that will allow her to hit five cemeteries, the UCLA campus, and the beach so she can get sand on her sneakers as part of her cover. 

She discovers, happily, that not only is she as fast and strong as she was before she died, her Slayer spidey-sense is also as sensitive as she's used to. She zig-zags along chasing the tingle of it, and by the time the sun's coming up she's staked eleven vampires, as well as bagging a Polgara, three Myanoks and a nest of Suvoltes. 

* * *

“Buffy? Honey, are you up yet?” Joyce bumps her daughter's door open with her hip as she's fastening her earring. “Remember, I need to drop you off early today because I have an appointment at the gallery. Honey?” 

But there's no Buffy in the tangle of covers. The bathroom door is open, so she isn't showering. 

Joyce's runnning down the stairs, hoping to find her in the kitchen, when she hears the front door open, and in comes a very sweaty and disheveled Buffy, in pink sneakers and black spandex shorts and a pink and white polka-dot t-shirt. She's wearing a purple fanny pack. “Hey, mom!” she says cheerily as she bounces in the door, heading straight for the kitchen where she drinks three cups of water from the tap. 

“Where have you _been?”_

“I went for a run.” 

“A run.” 

“Well, more like a jog. Just down San Vicente to Palisades Park and back.” 

“What on earth posessed you to go out at this hour?” She doesn't think Buffy's lying, exactly, but it's just so _unlike_ her. 

“Woke up early. Major case of the fidgets. Figured if I went for a run, maybe I can actually sit still and pay attention in class. What a concept, right? I better go shower and get dressed, don't wanna be late for school.” She puts her used cup in the dishwasher without being asked and presses a kiss to Joyce's cheek on her way out of the kitchen. “You look nice today.” 

She's back down within twenty minutes, wearing jeans, the red Converse sneakers that had been sneered at just two months ago when she got them as a birthday present from her Great-Aunt Norma, and a long-sleeved navy and white breton-stripe shirt that looks...very familiar. 

“Is that my shirt?” 

“Yeah, you don't mind if I borrow it, right? Thanks, Mom! Meet you in the car!” She plucks a pear and a banana from the fruit bowl without being prompted to eat something healthy, doesn't even glance at the coffee-maker, and bounces toward the garage, damp ponytail swinging. She's wearing the denim mini-backpack with embroidered butterflies that had been a birthday gift from Gramma Summers, and also sneered at. 

Joyce just shakes her head wearily. _“Teenagers.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned in the last chapter that Buffy is getting Called on, and essentially going back to, March of 1994. So canonically, she's thirteen and in the last semester of grade seven, and has one more year after before she starts Hemery. It is pretty young (though not the youngest Slayer in this AU by a long shot, which I will cover later as Buffy delves more into Slayer history throughout this series). The dissonance between her physical and mental ages is also going to cause her some problems down the road. I picture this Buffy looking pretty similar to how SMG did on AMC, a.k.a. could pass for an adult with the right clothes and makeup, because I have known thirteen-year-olds who could pass for twenty, as well as thirteen-year-olds who couldn't even pass for thirteen (that was me, actually. I'm 32 and I still get very suspiciously ID'ed when I buy lottery tickets).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM NOT DEAD AND I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS FIC. Promise. It's just my tendency to not write in a linear fashion biting me in the ass.

“Nice backpack, Summers!” Corey Matthews sneers when he passes her in the hall. 

“Thanks!” Buffy replies brightly. She remembers him now; he'd made her life absolute hell all through middle school, until she'd been fortunate enough to escape him by going to Hemery. He'd been in the district for Bronson Alcott, and had become someone else's problem. “Hey, too bad about your face.” 

He blinks at her. Not the brightest boy, that Corey. “What about my face?” 

Buffy sucker-punches him. Not hard enough to break anything, but his nose is bleeding and he'll have two stellar black eyes by tomorrow. “That.” 

There are never any teachers in the hallways, so she swans away to her next class, sure that she won't get in trouble. After all, it isn't likely Corey will tell anyone he was beat up by a girl. 

* * *

“Summers! I can't believe you gave Matthews a black eye!” 

Buffy blinks at him. _Who is this guy? Am I supposed to know him?_ “I don't know what you're talking about,” she says blandly, and loudly enough for Mrs. Harker to hear from where she's coming up the aisle and handing back their math tests. “I would never hit somebody on school property. That's against the rules.” Mrs. Harker passes her desk and she winks at him. 

“Hey, so a bunch of us are going to see Ace Ventura this Friday, wanna come?” His smile brings back dusty middle-school memories. 

_Oh, right. Jason something. Whitman, Whitechapel? No, Whittaker! Jason Whittaker._ There was a time when she would have cheerfully killed someone for Jason Whittaker to talk to her. She'd almost flunked math class, the semester he sat next to her – that was why she remembered Mrs. Harker and the Parent-Teacher-Conference of Buffy Is Grounded All Summer. Wait...Ace Ventura? Ew. “No thanks.” 

“Not a Jim Carey fan?” 

“Not so much.” 

“Well, we could see something else.” Again with the smile. 

“That's okay, I have plans on Friday.” 

“Oh. Right. Some other time,” he suggests, looking baffled at being turned down; he's cute and popular enough that it's probably never happened before. 

“Sure.” _Oh God, I have to do this for five more years? I was out of my mind to suggest it._

* * *

That night, Buffy's planning a late patrol. She wants to hit Hollywood Boulevard, Piggyback Yard and downtown, as well as a demon bar in Santa Monica. So she washes off her makeup, hides a change of clothes in her bathroom, puts on her pajamas, and curls up in her bed with the book they're studying in English: _Lord of the Flies._

When her mother knocks on her door at 10:01 and comes in, Buffy asks her with a huff, “Why do we have to read horrible books about kids killing each other?” 

“Because life is hard, dear,” her mom says with a wry smile. 

“Seriously, though! I'm trying to read ahead because I don't _get it_ when we read it in class, Mr. Hill is always going on about symbolism and...alligators? No. That thing where a story about something is really a message about something else.” 

“Allegory.” 

“That. But as far as I can tell, it's just a book about kids on a deserted island being cruel to each other! I don't get what's supposed to be so great about it. I guess I'm just stupid.” 

“Buffy. You are _not_ stupid!” 

“Then why don't I get this stupid book?” 

Her mom moves to sit on the side of her bed. “A lot of people don't like classic novels. I had to read _Lord of the Flies_ in school, and I didn't like it either. I think partly because it represents something I didn't like to think about.” 

“People are inherently cruel.” Her mom looks at her sharply and she says, “Quoting Mr. Hill. I don't always get what he's saying, but I _do_ pay attention.” 

“You don't think people are cruel?” 

“No one who watches the news could argue that. I guess...I guess I just don't think that's all they are.” 

“In that case, you'll feel better when you get to the end. Which won't be tonight; it's time for bed.” 

“Ooh, but I'm hungry! Wanna have peanut butter toast with me?” 

Her mom rolls her eyes. “All right, but after that, _bed.”_

“Promise.” 

They go down to the kitchen, and Buffy scarfs down two pieces of toast with peanut butter, a chunk of cheese, and an apple, before being banished back upstairs by her mom. Just enough resistance to bedtime to keep her mom from being suspicious. She brushes her teeth, turns off her lights, and curls up under the covers. 

She lies still and breathes with the huff through her nose that Spike had told her she did in her sleep, when Mom opens the door to check on her twenty minutes later. And then she gets up, scrunches up her bed with pillows to look like someone's sleeping in it, retrieves the Barbie Make Me Pretty Styling Head that she'd dug out of her closet and arranges it at the top with the blankets mostly pulled up, goes into her bathroom, puts on jeans and a black tank top and a push-up bra, french braids her hair, puts on heavy black eyeliner, and carries her boots as she climbs out the bathroom window and down the oak tree. 

Hollywood Boulevard is a big fat nothing, although she does run into one hooker with fang scars on her neck. Buffy explains to Charisse that she'll be around, and any of the girls can come to her if they hear anything about girls going missing or turning up dead with fang marks, or Johns who aren't human. She has to pull a parking meter out of the concrete before Charisse will believe her, but in the end, they make a deal. 

She takes out a nest of two dozen vamps at the train yard, and her sweep of downtown nets her five muggers, three would-be rapists, and another ten vampires. She's warmed up and feeling good by the time she strolls into _The Loan Ranger._

A whole table full of Vahralls book it out the fire exit as soon as she walks in. “Wow. Was it something I said?” Buffy asks the weaselly-looking human bartender. 

“You didn't say anything,” he points out nervously. He has thinning, slicked-back dark hair and a hooked nose, and he's wearing a sweat-stained white undershirt under a loud Hawaiian shirt. Like if Willy the Snitch gained a hundred pounds. After a moment of study, Buffy realizes she recognizes him; he's ten years younger, of course, but Jimmy McKinley had taken over running _Caritas_ when Lorne left for Las Vegas. 

“All right, well, now I am. I'm the Slayer. And you're gonna want to put the word out. I don't have any quarrel with the peaceful and neutral demons, like Kimowji and M'gla'breks and Xorlanx. They can even come to me if they need help. And I'm willing to make treaties with peaceful individuals from warrior species if I ask around town and their rep is straight up, _or_ they can make a magical vow. But anyone or any _thing_ that preys on humans should leave the state if they like having their heads attached. Got it?” Buffy demands at a near-yell. 

The previously-silent bar is filled with murmurs of assent. 

“Good. See you around, Jimmy.” 

She's home in bed by three. 

* * *

Joyce doesn't know what to think. It's like Buffy has aged ten years overnight. She dresses more maturely, her makeup is subtle and elegant, she's even changed how she styles her hair. She does chores without being asked. Her grades have gone up. She goes running three mornings a week. She's started going to bed on time; Joyce checks on her at ten and finds her either in bed with the lights out, or in bed reading ahead in her textbooks. Most often it's a combination of the two, and she's fallen asleep reading. 

She can hardly complain about it, but it still makes her worry. It's just _not_ normal. 

* * *

“Hey, Summers.” 

“Hey, Ford.” Buffy hadn't considered this part of time travel; she still goes to the same school as Ford _and_ he still thinks they're friends. 

Buffy would say that people who have tried to kill her don't get to stay her friends, but, well, she kicked down that boundary shortly after her eighteenth birthday. 

Maybe people who have manipulated and lied to her don't get to....wait. 

Why is she mad at Ford, again? He just lied to, manipulated and left her to die _once._ She's slept with people who've done worse. 

“What's up with you?” 

“How do you mean?” 

“You punched Corey Matthews in the face, Jason Whittaker asked you out and _you turned him down,_ and you're dressed like Goth Barbie.” 

Buffy looks down at herself. She'd dressed on autopilot this morning, and she's wearing combat boots, old jeans with the knees ripped out, and a burgundy tank top under a black zip-front hoodie. She shifts and fights not to blush when she realizes she's got the knife she took off an M'Vashnik demon on patrol the other night strapped to her calf with grip tape, along with a stake at the small of her back, both in makeshift cardboard sheaths. It's not the most comfortable, but needs must, and 'makeshift' was pretty much her watchword during her Sunnydale years; she didn't have the money for custom rigs. 

Still, though. _Way to take weapons to school, Buffy. Not gonna wait to burn down the gym to get kicked out?_

Annnd Ford is still waiting for an answer. 

“You really wanna know what's up with me?” 

“Yeah...” 

“Kay. Tell your parents you're staying over at whoever's, or something, and meet me at the main gates of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery at sunset, and I'll show you.” 

“The parental units are in Hawaii. Dad's day-drinking and playing golf, Mom's day-drinking and doing the poolboy...you know, a typical vacation for them.” 

Buffy sighs. Really, it's no wonder Ford's moral compass was a little bent at eighteen; his parents are terrible people and he was pretty much raised by a succession of underpaid and overworked housekeepers. The fact that he'd expressed regret at trading her for his own life (and she gets, now, that there's enough of the person left behind with the demon that he really was trading for _his own_ life) is actually a pretty major accomplishment considering what he was raised with. “Even better, no need to make excuses.” 

“Sure. I'll see you there.” 

_Great. This won't go badly at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: What a sweet review! I think I'll reply to it.
> 
> social anxiety: ORRRRR
> 
> me: hoe don't do it
> 
> social anxiety: ORRRR we could be an awkward turtle and overthink our response for TWO MONTHS and then not reply at all because it's been too long and we made it weird! And then stress out about how we didn't reply and it made us look rude and ungrateful!
> 
> me: ugh why are you like this
> 
> social anxiety: AHAHAHA
> 
> I am trying to be better about responding to ALL messages, from internet-folk and IRL peeps...it's actually my NY's resolution for 2018. But. It's very much a work in progress. So if you get a response in your inbox to a review you left many months ago, that's why.


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